Gang Truce Opens Window Of Peace

April 28, 1993|By George Papajohn, and Colin McMahon. Tribune reporter William Recktenwald contributed to this story.

Harold "Noonie" Ward gestures broadly, arms extended toward a cluster of simple rowhouses. Ward, a high-ranking member of the Gangster Disciples, is standing a few yards from his four-door Mercedes Benz, feet planted firmly in rival Vice Lords territory.

"I ain't supposed to be here," he says, smiling, a gold chain glistening in the sun.

This is not a demonstration of bravado. It is, he says, an example of how a gang truce has changed people's lives in the Altgeld Gardens public housing complex.

Police report that shootings there, once commonplace, are now rare. Young men can travel safely through Altgeld's maze of streets, confident that they will not be shot for merely crossing an invisible line. Mothers on stoops watch their children play in the front yard into the early evening, unafraid of being caught in a cross-fire.

Residents welcome the changes like a prisoner embraces furlough.

But elsewhere in the city, tranquility on the streets is as distant a dream as the down payment on a luxury automobile.

Eight hours after Ward celebrated brotherhood and peace, and several miles northwest of where he stood, Frederick Alston, 14, was gunned down in front of a liquor store. The shooting, police say, stemmed from a gang dispute.

"There's no truce out here, pal," said Sgt. Ronald Palmer of the Pullman Area, which investigated the death of the 14-year-old boy and a succession of other gang-related crimes. "They're dropping like flies."

The truce, announced last November by the city's 12 major black gangs, has been successful only on a limited basis. Organizers here point to a handful of areas where it is working, including Altgeld on the Far South Side, three police districts on the South Side and Cabrini-Green on the Near North Side.

Latino gangs never were and still are not part of the truce. Suburban and white gangs have not signed on either. Black gangs on the West Side are at each other's throats.

There's no evidence that the drug trade has abated. Gang recruitment of boys and girls continues. In the areas where the truce supposedly is holding, gang members have not laid down their weapons.

The kill-or-be-killed code of the street is not easily shed.

"You never get caught with your guard down," said a 17-year-old gang member who runs with the Insane Vice Lords on the South Side. "You don't change because there's a truce, either. I'm still going to watch you, and I know you're still going to watch me.

"I know thoughts are going through your head: `I don't want no truce for him. They shot my boy. They shot my cousin. They shot me.' All you be thinking about is revenge. You wanna kill 'em all, you know."

It might be easy to write off the truce if not for the isolated pockets where a drop in crime has made some neighborhoods a little more livable.

LeRoy Martin, former Chicago police superintendent and now public safety director for the Chicago Housing Authority, gives partial credit to the gangs for making Cabrini and Altgeld safer.

"I have to give the devil his due," Martin said. "I think the truce has been somewhat effective."

But an increased police presence in both complexes also played a role. The death of 7-year-old Dantrell Davis, who police say was shot by a gang sniper aiming at rivals, helped transform Cabrini. There have been no homicides there since Dantrell died Oct. 13, and improved lighting and security checkpoints have lessened the danger in Cabrini.

Three weeks after Dantrell was killed, the peace treaty was announced. At about the same time, the CHA opened a police station in Altgeld. Residents noticed an immediate difference; some thank the police, some thank the gangs.

Gang members in Altgeld relish their new freedom to move from their own turf to what formerly was enemy territory.

"We all grew up together," said "Snoop," 26, a member of the Traveling Vice Lords. "We don't need to fight nobody now. People (get) tired of that bloodshed, tired of the black-on-black crime."

Gang leaders said they were weary of the unending cycle of violence and ready to do something to help their communities.

"I feel it's time for me to grow up," said Terrell Bruce, 23, South Side leader of the Conservative Vice Lords. "To be a Vice Lord, it's love, truth, peace, freedom and justice. When I was shooting, I wasn't doing that."

The gang peace, though, requires the occasional nonpeaceful remedy. The threat of violence from gang leaders hangs over anybody who would break the truce at Altgeld.

"Noonie" Ward, 30, who works as a concert promoter, and Bruce are cryptic about the punishments meted out, saying only that the methods are sufficient to ensure offenders never violate the truce again.